There have been a few interviews done on YouTube where Jeff talks a bit about his plan to colonize the solar system in the long term. He is an interesting thinker, and the most productive person in the world if your measuring stick is cash. According to him he is always looking ahead to the next 2-8 years when making decisions at Amazon. Though, he says that his space company "Blue Origin" is more important because we do not want to live in a world of stasis in 200 years.

I agree with him. Though, I think his optimism may be blinding him to the risks and barriers ahead. I do not know much about him, so maybe I am wrong.

I'm glad that there are people financially capable and interested in moving us forward in going to space. The more the better in that sense. Is he overly optimistic, probably. However if this leads to progress to a lesser degree than he expects, but more than we would otherwise have had I'll take it.

As for Amazon, it doesn't look like it's growth is stopping any time soon.

Last edited by prognastat on Fri Oct 05, 2018 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

I love Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (even tho Musk is a bit of a jerk). Jeff Bezos and I are the same age, and I imagine him reading the same sci-fi as I did when I was a kid—and being really pissed when he grew up and we didn’t have jet packs and Mars colonies. So he’s doing something about it. I love that photo of him in the early days of Amazon where he’s got hair and sitting at a big desk with a paper banner that says Amazon.com on it.

The guy is a pioneer in my book. He’s done more to to change books and how we read them since Gutenberg. He’s changed how we shop, love it or not (I love it). He’s doing innovative stuff with his money, and I admire that (the Waltons mostly just sit on their millions, as far as I can tell).

And he’s done all this from reasonably humble beginnings, not with a $400m inflow of money of dubious origins from his dad.

What I find interesting is the Neal Stephenson has worked as an advisor/met with Bezos at Blue Origin (the space company). This was somewhat before Seveneves came out. I bet research had been going on for a while. Blue Origin was initially a somewhat more experimental/secretive company before it became a touristy space elevator. Quite a different approach than SpaceX.

The ERE book is pretty much available exclusively through amazon now. There's just no competition(*). I tried opening it op to third parties at one point. However, the printer (a subsidiary of amazon, now recently absorbed into KDP) would offer it with less royalties to me and slightly cheaper than amazon could profit from it.

What consequently happened? Various algorithmic book arbitragers would offer the book on amazon's used market for $0.01 less ... and people being frugal or hating amazon would buy it from them instead of amazon thus saving the buyer 1 cent and costing me five bucks in lost revenue per book. It took me a few years to realize what was going on before I shut the channel down.

The guy watches Star Trek reruns in the middle of the night and calls up UPS executives "Listen, you just throw a coat of brown paint on the fucking thing and we beam the books up for nothing. But we still charge the assholes postage. I'll just tell them I give a shit about space."

Some naive people think the purpose of a corporation is equivalent to its mission statement. Others believe it must be to "profit", but system thinkers know that the purpose of a corporation is "Dominance."

Exploration of earth was not a product of a bunch of idealistic guys saying "Gee, I really love geography and want to open up new vistas for the betterment of mankind." It was a product of a bunch of materialistic guys wanting to open up new marketplaces who spoke such bullshit. Space exploration is no different.

A corporation is like both an organism and a city. The energy required scales sub-linearly like organisms, but when a company grows big enough it may start to behave in a similar manner to a city. A large enough organization can construct an innovative culture where creative destruction happens at a low level (i.e. employee teams) so the whole can survive.

This is a lot like how a fungal mass can redistribute resources in responce to environmental changes detected on the opposing side of the forest.

A corporation is like the mainspring in a clock. It unwinds increasingly faster but only as fast as the escapement will allow it. The escapement regulates the energy release and is governed by the balance spring to keep track of time. This is the same way governments stabilize the political system so it doesn't collapse or start a war.

This is lot like how humans apply their favorite metaphors to the world and ascribe all sorts of qualities that might not be there after all.